ICE CREAMS I 99 Flake. Edinburgh, Scotland. Photography by Luke Stephenson.

The true story of the nation's favourite ice cream

So the best story goes; in 1922 Stefano Arcari from bonnie Scotland had an ice cream shop at 99 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh. One fine day, he chopped a long chocolate flake in half and plonked it in an ice cream, by 1930 a Cadbury employee knocked off the idea. A proper British icon needs a proper back story. Or was it Italian soft ice cream makers working in 1920s County Durham who decided to pop the Flake into their ice creams to boost sales. The name for their popular creation was based on an elite guard of the King of Italy consisting of 99 men which subsequently came to denote anything tip top. Or could the simpler answer be that the initials IC, for ice cream, match the Roman numerals for 99. I read that last comment deep within the dark web.

Either way, the Flake itself emerged around 1920 when a worker at Cadbury’s Bournville factory in Birmingham noticed that chocolate overflowing its moulds glooped down and set in appetising ripples. Maybe those ripples reminded people of the wave like undulations you get in iced cream since by 1930, Cadbury’s was selling half-length Flake ‘99s’, specifically for prodding into ice cream. Prodding your average crumbly flake into frozen iced cream might be a little tricky but thank the dairy Gods because Mr Whippy’s soft serve ice cream was created at around the same time. An urban myth has it that the Iron Lady worked on soft serve in her time as a chemist in the 1940s but in truth, it was popular in the USA from the 1930s. Mr Whippy is 40% air and therefore great for ice cream manufacturers profits but try to forget I just said that. Unilever who now own Mr Whippy probably appreciates it though. The third item in the holy trinity is The Cone. These originate from the emergency use of rolled up waffles at the St Louis fair of 1904. The waffle stand providing a neat solution to its neighbouring ice cream stand running out of plates. Life is a series of co-incidences indeed.

No. 58

New Brighton, Thursday 22nd August, 18°c Sunny

No. 81

Porlock, Tuesday 27th August, 17°c, Cloudy

I can’t think of anyone better to explore this wonderful cultural artefact and icon of the UK than photographer Luke Stephenson. In the probably not very golden summer of 2013 he set out on a road trip, over 25 days and 3,500 miles, around the coastline of Great Britain. As Michael Smith says in the foreword to Luke’s book; ‘American photographers do vast epic road trips down route 66. English photographers go to the seaside’. There’s a parallel with The Coracle’s travels in the Coraclemobile as Luke used the campervan equivalent of a 99 Flake, a Bedord Rascal, one of the cutest and smallest camper vans known to campingkind. In his own words, the trip gave him the ‘Measure of England’. ‘You really get an idea of the scale of the country and the little differences that make up the country, from the accents to the landscape. It’s wonderful that on such a small island there can be so much diversity.’ Each ice cream portrait has its corresponding van of origin, alongside the location, date and temperature. One of the joys of this project is that it’s approached like a conceptual art piece but the gentle humour makes it much more fun! Spend some time with it and you’ll see the different characters of each ’99’: the brassy one, the triumphant, the dumpy and the obscene.

No.93

Millbrook, Thursday 29th August, 17°c, Cloudy

Ice cream has come a long way since Charles I of England was so enamoured of the newfangled ‘frozen snow’ that he gave his official ice cream maker a lifetime pension in return for the formula remaining a secret and therefore ice cream maintaining its royal prerogative. Tight. The Victorians excelled at building small ice houses in their considerable back yards to store it but the invention of electricity was far more impactful. Is the ’99’ up there with other UK delights like the kipper or the scone? Maybe not but that fluffy babyish soft serve is as comforting as a crocheted blanket. Would you rather have an organic skinny non-dairy version? It’s probably out there already in some fashionable urban corner, probably served by an Italian.

Luke’s project has been turned into a mighty fine book which you can buy here

Take a good peep at more of his projects, Showbirds, Plane Spotters, Clowns, here